PR Isn’t What You Think – What Founders Get Wrong About Personal Branding (With Priscilla Pollara)

I don’t post them up because I don’t have time.
I don’t think they’re very, you know, Instagrammable or, or photo photographic.
But the main reason is because it has nothing to do with my business.
I only keep that narrative pretty strong.
I only talk about work because for me, other stuff dilutes what I’m trying to do.
It distracts from it because what do I know about how people follow me?
Will they follow me because I share tiramisu recipes?
Because I love a tiramisu and I’m Italian and it you may well see it on my feet if I have the time and inclination.

No Bullsh*t Talks is a podcast for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs.
There’s too much bullshit out there, especially when it comes to business.
This podcast aims to highlight what’s true and what’s not in the world of entrepreneurship, bringing you honest and raw conversations about the roller coaster that is entrepreneurship.
Each week my guest will be a high performing entrepreneur, sharing the ups and downs of their journey and helping you prepare for the road ahead while providing you with actionable insights and absolute gems and knowledge.
Stay tuned as I introduce this week’s guest.

Priscilla Pollara is the founder of Top Trick, a PR and Comms Consultancy in London.
She’s a journalist by trade, writing for huge publications such as Tesla, the Evening Standard, and the Daily Mail.
Priscilla helps founders get clear on their comms to ensure they’re talking to the right audience and helping them and their businesses get the attention that they deserve.
I present to you this week’s guest, Priscilla Pollara.
Welcome Priscilla to no Bullshit Talks.
Thank you very much this.
Has been amazing.
I feel like it’s been a long time coming.
I’m going to have you on the podcast, but you’ve no stranger to you’re no stranger to NOBS.
I’m not.
I’m not.
I’ve been to many of the events and I know what you were trying to do with it and I fully support it.
I mean, it’s brilliant.
Yeah, exactly.
That’s totally what I meant by that comment.
Obviously not.
Yeah, of course.
But I am so happy that I’ve finally got you on the podcast, and I’d love for you to introduce yourself and tell people what you do.
Yeah, I’m OK.
Well I’m Priscilla and I’m a journalist by trade, but I now help basically people self promote and not hate it.
And that can be anyone from a politician who has a very important policy they want to get across and not put off people by doing it.
So that’s often about editing down and making something sound more attractive and more appealing to the people who they need to hook in all the way down.
Not to denigrate them in any way, but in terms of size, a micro business who have created something by hand, maybe it’s a family business that they’re keeping alive.
They might be small in size.
They might just be one person, but their issue would be more, well, I’m fantastic at what I do, but now what do I do with it?
How do I tell other people?
And there are a lot of people in between those two extremes, corporate training teams that don’t speak to each other or businesses who have been, who have seen a lot of great success but have plateaued either because they haven’t caught up with the digital revolution that we’re having constantly.
Oh, because their market and audience has changed, but they haven’t changed with it.
And underpinning all of that is an importance to keep marketing yourself, keep marketing the the message behind the brand.
And a lot of people find that difficult.
And that’s where I help.

So what I find interesting is that if you’re talking about politicians and then small business owners, and I’m like, like you said, it’s one extreme to the other.
But as you were talking, I started thinking, is it that different?
Because I feel like these days in the world of personal branding, small business owners are taking to LinkedIn or Instagram and basically being politicians in the way that they’re doing their big speeches everyday, talking and essentially spewing bullshit.
That’s what it’s the best thing politicians do anyway.
So my question is, I guess how, how similar is it in that sense, like with what these days people think, what personal branding should be?
Do you see similarities between what politicians do and how they’re portrayed?
Because to the general public, our government isn’t loved, right?
So it’s like, it’s that fair to say.
I feel like it’s, I mean it’s to everyone else, but yes.
It’s probably fair to say that our government isn’t loved.
Politicians do not have the greatest reputation and I feel like now with personal branding and everything, lots of people are being quite political in the way they’re operating.
And so do you see there’s a similarities in in that?
Similarities in the two types of well, the only similarity that I see, the thing that underpins all of that is, you know, I ask the people or I audit from an objective point of view and I sort of say, well, who are you trying to attract and are you getting them?
Are you I, do they understand your language?
And the answer is obviously no or usually no because that’s why I’m involved or people like me.
And you start to wonder why do they not understand what you do?
And it doesn’t matter whether you’re a politician or someone trying to sell a new line of mugs that are unbreakable and are come in seven different colours and everything in between, because you’re obviously not hooking your audience.
And that’s what both of those parties need.
I actually think personal branding, well, you know, my feelings on personal branding.
Personal branding is one of those labels that has appeared out of nowhere in the last, I don’t know, 10 years, let’s say, maybe.
Even less.
I think it’s about 5-6, yeah.
What is personal branding?
To me it’s just PR.
It’s just PRI mean PRI.
Don’t know the exact Oxford English Dictionary definition, but it’s something along the lines of when you influence a crowd or a group of people to either buy or feel or think the way you do, so you’re influencing.
That’s another word that’s been hijacked in even less of that time, and it now means something completely different.
But PR is behind absolutely everything.
PR is behind, you know, the cigarettes that people used to know so, so well in those adverts, The, you know, those chewing gum adverts, the chap on the bus who took the Wrigley’s gum outside of his jeans or Pepsi, Coca-Cola.
Personal branding is a way of being able to own the PR.
So it’s all about you.
But ultimately there are few businesses that can survive on that because guess what?
When you are, it’s not simply depending on personal branding.
You end up being a you, you end up sort of failing in keeping that sustainable.
At the end of the day, the customer or the client wants to know they have full faith in something.
They want to know what the message is.
They wanted to rely on it.
They want to know that it’s always going to be that the longevity factor, personal branding, because it’s so new.
My question is, how long is it going to stay?
How, how, how many routes does that PR campaign actually have?
Does finding out about somebody and everything they do really make you want to buy forever, or is it the longevity of the product?
But the thing which connects those two markets is simply messaging and audience.
Do they know what they’re saying and do they know who they’re saying it to?
In my opinion, everything else is peripheral.
You should really only be trying to attract the audience that you started the business for or you’ve become a politician for in the 1st place.
Everyone else, if they come, imagine a stage, you start singing, you are a fantastic what kind of a singer, a country singer.
You’ve got your little audience.
A bit like when there’s music, live music in Hyde Park and other places around the world that are similar to that.
Yes, you can have a ticket, a great expense to go and listen to your band, a band that you adore.
But people start to flock.
They can, they can be up high on a, you know, in a, in a flat listening, watching.
You could, you know, drive past in the car and I don’t know, park on a double yellow somewhere and try and listen.
Those are people who wouldn’t have bought a ticket because they didn’t like the country music that you’re playing, but they were attracted anyway.
And what’s the the most important thing for that country band is to talk only to that audience.
Everyone else will come, but they originally need to sell those tickets to the people who they started the band for.
So for me, the small business, I don’t like the term small business either, but small in size, fantastic all the way to the individual who has a policy disrupting way in their head somewhere.
Really, they need to talk to the people they know.
They can persuade and convince straight away, and everything else is peripheral.
I love all of that and there’s so many things I was thinking of when you’re talking about there.
You say they like the term small business and I get it because some people get offended.

They, they say you’re calling my business small and I’m like, well, by definition you are small because it’s still like it’s under, I don’t know, quite a lot of 1,000,000 before you’re not counted as small, which is ridiculous.
So I often use the term entrepreneurs because I feel like it sounds fancier.
And I think it’s, it’s broader in terms of because it’s just showing someone who’s entrepreneurial and doesn’t matter what business they’re in.
So I feel like it’s so I often use entrepreneurs like this podcast is for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.
So however you want to see that you mentioning brands and you’re like Coca-Cola, Pepsi and all that sort of stuff.
And I was thinking, do people know who the CEO of those companies are?
Do people know founded some of these big brands?
If you think about your favourite brands out there, it’s a little bit different now because they all have got personal brands attached to them.
But even if you think about some of the world’s biggest brands, even like Nike, people might know the founder because that’s more documented.
But people do people know what he’s doing on a day-to-day basis?
Do people see him walking and and doing his like coffee runs in the morning?
Like it’s, it’s kind of crazy.
And people, and, you know, we were at lunch the other day and I said, you can have a successful business without a personal brand.
And, you know, some people were like nodding, yeah, But some people were like, oh God, that’s a, that’s a bold thing to say.
Like, because in this day and age, everyone’s saying the opposite.
You cannot have a business without a personal brand.
And I think that, like you were saying, it just comes down to PR at the end of the day.
And I think like you need PR in general and personal branding is an element of PR is what you’re trying to say.
PR is a puzzle, right?
There are pieces to the puzzle and personal branding is 1 which you can choose to use or not.
You can choose to try and you can take it back.
You could try it for a bit to get things started and you can move it around and prioritize another puzzle piece, but it’s always PR.
The game is PR.
When you take the board game outside from a shelf or a cupboard that is a puzzle.
It’s called PR.
Personal branding is one thing you can opt for some people, politicians too, but some people choose to go the other way and they are invisible and that is their PR option.
You know, that is what they’ve decided to do and they’ve become well known for never being look at Steve Jobs, Apple, that was, you know, now is quite a long time ago.
But he came out on stage and he presented that was part of what he knew would sell the iPhone and everything Apple was was coming into at that point.
But there are plenty of companies that launch quietly but brilliantly.
And you know, that is that is what they’ve chosen.
PR could be appearing on podcasts, It could be appearing in the press.
That’s another thing PR most people think I’ve got to get my PR done and they think it’s just press coverage.
No, PR is how you seem, how you look, how you come across, who you hang out with as a business, who you collaborate with, what values therefore people perceive you have the principles and PR could be, as I said, the podcast, fantastic website.
Is it e-mail marketing for you?
Is it personal branding?
Is it a social media queen or king?
It doesn’t have to be all of those things.
In fact, you look quite spread thin at that point.
My question always goes back to what kind of business are you?
What was the passion that began it and who is your best customer?
Who is your audience?
Where are they?
Where do they hang out?
Are they influenced by press?
Do they want to follow a personal brand?
A king?
Are they on social media?
What age are they?
What sex are they?
What do they?
What floats their boat?
Quite literally, that’s what PR is.
You know, if I started a, a brand, it was all, it was jewellery brand, you know who, who is my target audience?
I can immediately sort of work it out.
But six months into the business, I’d probably work out that my target audience was not only obviously a woman between 30 and 50, let’s say, but I’d had become quite interested in vintage.
And therefore who’s going to be interested in vintage?
Actually, even a younger market who’d think, oh, I’d love to have.
So you’ve got to keep thinking who your audience is.
It changes all the time, especially in politics.
You know, you’re talking about different things, the culture changes, global finance changes, that affects the UK and you have to, you have to keep moving.
If you’re into personal branding, if personal branding works for you, that’s fantastic.
But my question would be, I never think there’s a yes and a no answer.
There’s no right or wrong when you are doing your PR or business PR.
But my question is, I always have a set of considerations.
Perhaps it’s rather annoying that I sit on the fence and go, well, you could, but what about?
But it’s really important that somebody does that.
It’s a bit like a squash court.
You hit me the ball, I’m going to hit it back.
My consideration with personal branding is can you keep that up?
Do are people tuning in to watch you?
Are there other people who should also be in the in the lens there?
But really the biggest one is, is it converting?
If it is, keep going.
If it is well done.
This is the best time ever to be a personal brand, to be able to sink into it so beautifully.
You have a range of social media options, media options like these, to constantly talk about yourself and your passion.
That’s fantastic.
But my question is, is it converting?
And if the answer was no, I’d have another look at what kind of PR you should be going for.
Let’s look at that puzzle and play again.
And I think like the questions you were asking during that, that there, it’s where people should start, but people just don’t even think about it.
You’re like, who are your customers?
Where they do they care about this content?
And what I noticed because I’m, I’m big on strategy, right?
That’s my whole thing.
Chess, poker.
I’m a strategy obsessed person and strategy is fascinating, but it’s also so essential to every business, every brand, every like marketing strategy, business strategy, brand strategy.
There’s the strategy to everything right, but people skip that bit because that’s boring because that’s not you’re not producing anything and strategy.
You’re just discussing things you’re finding out information, you’re researching things you’re you’re actually planning.
That’s not the juicy stuff.
They just want to get in front of the camera.
They want to start posting stuff on Instagram.
They want to see how many TikTok views they get.
They want to they want to go viral on social media.
That’s what they want to do and they want to be shouting out.
I did this campaign, I’m on stage here.
I met this influencer.
That’s the sort of stuff that they feel like they’re doing something.
They’re, they’re exciting, they’re out there, they’re they’re being entrepreneurs.
Like this is how this is what that people love.
But then they do all that, they spend all that money, all that time, that energy.
But how do you know what type of content to create if you don’t know who your target audience are?
How do you know what they even like?
Like you assume they like this stuff because everyone’s telling you about personal banning.
But like you said, when I think about me, I don’t watch all that stuff.
Like when I think about the content I watch, I don’t absorb.
I watch.
I’m very education based, so I watch something on YouTube because I want to learn about that topic.
I’m very big on personal development.
So all that sort of stuff.
If I think it’s going to improve something, if I I want to learn about something, I’ll listen to that.
I don’t watch Day in the lives.
I don’t really care for it.
And when I was trying to create that content for myself, I hated it.
I felt so stupid, like walking around doing this all the time and I just feel silly.
I feel like it’s pointless.
I don’t understand.
Why I didn’t align with what you were trying to do with your brand?
Yeah, and I just feel like I wouldn’t watch this so and, and I actually am my target audience as well, so I feel that makes it a lot easier.
And I’m just like, why am I doing this?
And I felt like I was, I felt pressured.
And that’s not external forces, that’s not me going all the world’s making, it’s my choice, right?
I felt pressured because I saw it all happening and I saw people loving this content.
But I’m like, the people loving that content are not the people that I want to have in my club.
And I just realized I was distracted by how many billions of people in the world.
Obviously they’re all going to want different things.
So you’ve got to find your little people.
And I think that’s the first thing.
It’s that for me, PR was so misunderstood for a start, like you said, PR people think PR is digital marketing or put some running.

They don’t really understand it.
I think a lot of people just think PR is press and times of like getting published in Forbes, that’s one everyone loves at the moment, getting onto TV, getting onto it.
Like, you know, that’s PR.
That’s what people consider PR or this magazine, this award, this like, you know, that sort of stuff.
And I feel like PR to a lot of people is this thing that’s so difficult to get.
It’s like this ultimate kudos that only the best of the best get.
And it’s like, if you get it, then suddenly your life’s going to change sort of thing.
That’s the impression that I get around the circles I’m in.
Whereas digital marketing anyone can do.
And you now automate that with AI and bots and stuff like that.
And then now personal branding also anyone could do because everyone’s a guru doing personal branding.
So I think those are more easily accessible in the eyes of people and the audience I’m talking to.
And PR is this really hard to attain thing and that’s the vision I get.
And so obviously this is not at all what the reality is.
And I’d love for you to just, I guess, enlighten us and say what’s bullshit that people are talking about in PR, whatever.
And what should founders be doing?
They need to know their audience, they need to know who they are talking to.
And I said it before, but if you find out, let’s call that person Felicity, my fictional jewelry brand customer.
Where, how old is she?
Is she a woman or a man?
I’m going to decide that she’s a woman there.
Where does she hang out?
Where does she get her information from and where is she influenced?
These are really important things because Felicity is the best.
I’m trying to get to any bars I create outside of Felicity and her gang is fantastic, but I’ve got to get Felicity on board first.
Otherwise my brand has no legs.
If I went into a room of, I don’t know, a group of 70-year-old men, they might think, oh, my granddaughter might like that.
And then quickly move on, they might make a purchase, but that is not, it’s very, it’s like walking through treacle.
I mean, that’s going to be difficult.
Whereas if I walk into a room with a suitcase full of jewelry into a group of women, in the middle of a group of women who I know would be interested in jewelry, they sort of look at me and go, gosh, this is great.
And can we have coffee?
Wow, this is so cool.
Did you make this?
And suddenly everyone’s very kind and very interested.
U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger once said, and I love this phrase because it’s so basic but so important.
I hope I’m going to quote it correctly.
But he said, if you don’t know where you’re going, the path will lead you nowhere.
Now, that can be applied to everything.
And we’re not going to get onto other topics today, but in terms of strategy, which is what you’ve just mentioned, I think social media has been fantastic in many ways.
And we’re not here to talk about social media.
It has opened up the world in a split second.
We were there yesterday.
I mean, it’s fantastic in many ways.
And we all have all become friends.
We’ve met people we wouldn’t have otherwise.
And it’s opened up the world.
But it does also have this flip side, many flip sides.
But the one I’m going to talk about today is the one where it makes you feel like you can climb to the top of the rainbow or a mountain or a ladder and reach anyone you want and it’s free.
Of course, it’s not free because it costs you your time, probably your energy and sanity, but also paid ads.
Suddenly it does go into the finance and you can fall down holes with this person’s going to help you do X and then there’s a new button that you don’t quite understand.
So then you hire someone else to help you with that one.
So it’s quite expensive, but it’s this concept of being able to reach everyone.
The goal some years ago was to land a front page.
Let’s talk basic facts, landing a front page.
Obviously it’s a particular kind of story, but in essence, metaphorically, you are on the front page.
You are the most important story.
That was difficult.
You’d have to be, the story would have to be important or tragic enough or crucial enough for that to happen.
So let’s think about the metaphor there.
It’s about being top dog, top story, most important, most important right now, most key.
Now everybody thinks their story is the most important, most crucial, most key.
Social media has given that option, that’s great.
Maybe you can, but as long as you’re talking to your audience, then you are the key person in their life.
But what I find funny is that before when you just said how do we do our PR, you talk about content a lot.
And I think that’s where the social media revolution has got to.
Because I think PR now also is all about, well, what do I say in my content in order to get people to me?
I actually think it’s so much more than that.
It can be your content, but for me, content is a backup.
It can be your primary.
It can also be a backup.
So put it this way, if somebody told you that a restaurant, a new restaurant was fantastic, you’d think, oh, that’s interesting.
Another 10 people tell you, you think I must be the last person to know.
Let’s book a table.
Everyone’s been in that position.
It’s a bit like seeing 10 taxis with an advert.
You keep seeing it and think that’s clearly the bank account I need to open.
It does something to you.
It starts to make you think, it influences you.
Is that content?
Well, it’s a form of content, but it’s not on social media, it’s not in the press.
It affected you in a totally different way.
It was word referral, or maybe it was the taxi.
It’s content, but as we knew it 40 years ago, content simply means stuff.
Stuff people are saying.
Content that you commit to social media is social media content.
But there are other ways that you can hook people in.
I mean, there are plenty of companies that I advise to get off social media as much as they are.
You know, it’s too much.
They’re either diluting a message, feeling that they’ve got to continually post and keep up with the number of posts people are now expecting.
This is sort of the problem with personal branding.
People are expecting to either love you, follow you, take all your advice or pick on you.
As you have experienced yourself.
It’s almost like a bit of a punch bag and you feel you need to keep up with it, either to defend your position or to show up.
This phrase, to show up.
What does that mean?
Show up as much as you like, in my opinion, but have something to say.
This is a good point.
Often, you know, when you go to a networking opportunity, even when you don’t necessarily know that it’s going to be quite as good as it is.
But somewhere where you know other founders will be milling around or perhaps more senior in your company, you’re not clearly meeting your best friend.
Most people think about what they might wear to the event, but they’ll never think about what they’re going to say.
And to me, personal branding is one thing, but personal PR, if that’s what we want to call it, is so much more important.
What are you going to say in a room full of opportunity or in a moment of opportunity when you outstretch your hand?
I give a talk called the awkward hello because we all, either you’ve seen Love Actually in the Hugh Grant moment where he does some weird hand gesture towards Martine McCutcheon and then he walks past her and thinks, oh my God, why did I do that?
That’s just, what a wally.
And we’ve all been in that position.
We all love him.
We.
All love him for that.
We all love him, mostly not because he’s very handsome and all of that.
It’s because we’ve done that.
And you relate.
You totally relate.
It was clever.
It was very, very clever, it was genius.
Because we’ve all been in positions when we have, you know, we’ve suddenly all sort of, Priscilla, let us know what you do or oh, you should talk to Priscilla.
And suddenly all the ideas go from your head and you know there’s no AI to back you up there.
It’s actually just you.
You know, all these platforms that we can depend on, people who do the content for us.
Maybe it’s AI, maybe it’s a fantastic team that’s all brilliant.
Do what works to get to your customer and make those sales.
Because remember, that’s why you were in business in the first place.
But when you are just yourself, make sure that you’ve also done a bit of work to ensure that you sell or your team is selling all the time what you’re doing.
It’s a bit like, why do schools, most schools have uniforms?
Because when they’re going home at night or in the morning, afternoon, they represent the school.
It’s PR for the school.
And that’s why, if you see children misbehaving, teenagers, they don’t usually because they know, well, some of them maybe don’t know, but they know that anybody could call up that school and say actually someone represented.
It’s all PR.
But what are you going to say in a room full of opportunity?
Have you thought about that?
When was the last time you thought, you know, I do 7 things, but tonight I can see that I’m going to be asked about number 5.
I won’t have an opportunity to talk about number 1, 2, and 3, which are my favourite and easy ones to talk about.
And I know this is relating.
I know people right now are listening to this resonating massively because we all fall into this trap of thinking, oh, I can absolutely ad-lib this.
You can be the most fluent speaker and you will not be able to ad-lib in that moment that you really need.
Yes, it’s confidence.
Yes, it’s imposter syndrome.
Yes, it’s all those things.
But it’s also because you probably haven’t really drilled down and thought, what am I going to say?
To me, that’s PR.
It’s not press there, it’s not content, it’s not AI, it’s not digital marketing, it’s not analysis, it’s not vanity metrics.
It’s certainly not metrics.
It’s just pure and simple.
Tell me what your name is, what you do, why you’re brilliant at it and why I should work with you or why I should buy your jewelry or your product.
It’s the classic elevator pitch, which I think people talked about ages ago and again.
Which is why I feel like all these buzzwords, like you said, we said already, bezel, influencer, like all this sort of stuff, buzzwords, it’s just the same stuff.
It comes down to elevator pitch.
We talked about decades ago and it’s always been a concept of like, and people don’t even realize what the term elevator pitch means because it’s literally from the chance encounter in an elevator.
You’ve got the time to get to the floor, pitch your business in that space of time.
You’ve got to be so slick and succinct.
It’s like you’ve got this one opportunity and like whoever it is now, a dragon from Dragon’s Den.
I guess these days it’s Stephen Bartlett, the one that everyone wants to be with.
Stephen Bartlett just happened to open the door, he’s in the elevator.
You’ve got to go.
Like, can you do that in that moment?
That’s basically what you’re saying, which I think is amazing because obviously everything I do is preach about in-person relationships.
And I think back, the reason why I’ve done this with NOBS is because I think back to every great client we’ve ever had, every great relationship.
It’s all come from in person.
It’s all that with personal referrals and then like chance encounters, all that sort of stuff.
And just in that moment, I’ve been able to say what I do well enough to an extent that they’re interested to give me their card and I follow up.
And that’s what it is.
And again, it’s all in the follow up, right?
That’s another thing.
But I want to just go back a little bit and talk about online because that’s where majority of people live now.

They’re all online.
That’s what the whole personal brand thing has come about, even though it’s so much more than that.
Like I was saying earlier, it’s about how people speak about you when you’re not in the room, and that’s part of personal brand.
But most people, and I say most people, which I think is probably fair to say when I’m talking about the consensus, they believe that your personal brand is what you post on social media.
And it’s how you come across.
It’s how many likes you get, like how big your following is.
And, like, you know, that’s what most people’s personal brand is.
So I want to talk about that because, like you said, we’re over-reliant on AI tools.
We’re caring too much about vanity metrics.
So, and PR as well, again, is like a lot of people think it’s, we’ve got to get featured in Forbes or all these magazines and then we’re going to share that on social media.
And it’s about, oh, I’ve got this BBC article, I got this.
And again, it’s to put it on your website, put those nice logos on there, share about it on your Instagram, and get all the likes and to see everyone be like, oh my God, well done you.
To most people these days, that’s what personal branding and PR is.
So I want to talk about that because there is a lot of reliance on AI.
There is a lot of reliance on your VAs and your team and digital marketing people.
And so a lot of entrepreneurs don’t need to do anything for themselves.
They are incapable of thinking for themselves, but they also believe that they don’t need to think for themselves because they have automations, they have a team, they have all these people, so they can just live their life.
They can go out, they can sit there, matcha teas, and they can lie on a beach somewhere and just let other people do their work for them.
So what’s going on with entrepreneurship now and what should we be concentrating on to build up that digital online presence because it’s still of value?
But where should we be concentrating instead of just this, you know, basics?
Yeah.
Everything, because the option out there is everything.
You could try everything.
That’s sort of the issue, actually.
There’s so many places, there are so many mountains that you can stand on top of and shout from the rooftops.
I mean, most of what I do is to try and get people to shout from the rooftops because a lot of people don’t.
So actually in that group of people you just mentioned, you’ve forgotten another one, which is there are founders who create something fantastic and believe in it and love it, and they wear all the hats.
But the top, the one, the hat right at the top where they never really get on their head, it’s right at the top, is some form of marketing.
So there are different sorts of entrepreneurs and founders who actually have all the passion and the love and the creation, and they’re too nervous to tell anyone about it.
And I always say, look, you could have the best idea in the room, but no one will find out unless you say it.
So there is that sort of founder too who, in fact, is quietly brilliant.
And I do sometimes say to people, don’t be quietly brilliant because that’s such a shame.
You are not making the most of this opportunity.
Then there are people who, so, you know, in a one-to-one, they’d be speaking to me about we’ve done all the right things, we’re doing the right things, we’ve won an award, but nobody seems to come.
And that can be a crafting of a message problem.
They might not understand, maybe the name, the name of the company is putting someone off.
It’s all about perception and influence.
PRC NOBS gets lots of people through the door, of course.
But that also puts a lot of people off it.
Can put a lot of people off, but you are mitigating that, you know that.
And that’s sort of part of the point in a way, because if you get it, you get it, and if you don’t, you don’t.
But yes, but you’re actually right.
There are people who do everything or too much.
Is that what you said?
Who don’t quite know.
It’s not targeted enough and there’s a lot of over-reliance.
So I also get these one-to-ones who are, you know, absolutely everywhere and smashing it, to use a 2025 phrase, on the numbers.
You know, just, you know, following numbers out of reach.
I mean, they are just extraordinary and, you know, everything is quote unquote viral and people seem to know them for no reason as sort of a proxy celebrity.
But then when you drill down and you think, well, why are you talking to me, then what is, has always a problem of some variety.
And the problem tends to be that there are no sales.
So I think to myself, well, you’re, you know, the other chaps are making brilliant sales, but need to make more and should do.
But they’re too nervous to come forward and use the digital revolution.
They’re sort of almost resistant and they’re panicked about it because they think, oh my gosh, am I going to, but not only is it too nerve-racking to be on camera, but am I going to betray what I started by talking about it?
How do I talk about it?
That’s very common.
This is how I started my business in the first place, to help those people.
But as I’ve gone on, there are those who have these fantastic presences out there, the online ones that we talked about.
No one else is talking about them.
Not on the tube.
You don’t hear it, but it’s all on your phone or on your computer.
But they’re not making the sales.
So what’s happening there to me is that they have relied very heavily on the message getting out there, but the message is not getting to the right people.
It’s standing on top of the rainbow, as I said before, and trying to reach everyone.
You’re shouting so loudly everyone can hear.
But the people who you want, the Felicity or whoever, doesn’t know that you’re there or doesn’t quite understand why you, a very great disruptor, are actually better than the ones they’ve had before.
It’s not targeted enough.
There are so many options out there.
Every week on Instagram there’s an update.
I find it very interesting.
For example, in the last, I’d say, 3 weeks, I don’t know if you’re aware, but on Instagram you can remove your reel numbers, your reel view numbers.
And which I quite like.
Which I’ve done as a little experiment to see if I actually would post more.
It hasn’t happened because I’m quite a reluctant Instagram user, but I am on there and I find that very interesting because it’s only a matter of time until they then remove the following numbers.
An option to do that, and that’s so interesting because it’s absolutely levelled the playing field now, because I don’t know if somebody is, you can see their following numbers and kind of sort of can imagine, but the viral element is irrelevant.
People pin those reels or videos that go up to 1.2 million.
But suddenly if you can’t see that, you have a very, what happens is it goes back to an old school PR hooray, which is all about influence and impressions.
You know, to me, PR is when I first met you, for example, last year, 18 months ago.
So you know what, I can’t remember what it is, but you know, when I met you, my question, I was introduced to you by a friend.
She introduced us and told me something about you.
So I had that sort of in my head somewhere.
Then I met you and I would have left the room or you would have left the room.
And what did I remember about you?
That is where the absolute magic happens.
Is it, you know, oh, I hated her.
She’s really fun.
She loves the same coffee as me.
What did she say about her work that was interesting?
You know, often it’s not really about the work or the elevator pitch that you remember.
It’s about, I don’t know, tripping up on the wire before you gave the elevator pitch and then you had a hearty laugh and you think, wow, I love her.
She’s brilliant.
It’s those little things.
And I think removing those reel view numbers, and I’m sure that this will be, you know, spread across other social media platforms in some way.
I don’t know.
I wouldn’t like to predict, but I think testing that out is really fascinating because it’s making people think.
You can’t judge them so much on the metrics.
They’re trying that out to see whether it’s your personal brand or what you’ve committed to, your content online, is actually the thing that wins somebody over.
But still, Felicity is the one you’re trying to get to, not everyone else.
You can’t try and attract everyone.
And you know those people who have huge numbers, not all of those numbers are buying.
They’re not all sales.
What are they following for?
They may not, by the way, even know that they’re following them.
After a while, you know, you don’t see everything that you follow.
But this is one of the things about personal branding which I find tricky.
You know, that people do come round to it.
You know, whenever I see somebody for work, they say, gosh, Priscilla, you’ve been so busy.
You’ve literally been everywhere, like a sort of pinball machine, you know, left, right, up, down.
Great.
And yeah, that can be true.
Some weeks work-wise I can be, and I will only post if it’s helpful to the person who’s hosting me or a party I’m going to or something to do with work.
I don’t just post willy-nilly, but all the stuff in between that I am not putting up, the boring Monday, the dishwasher or, I don’t know, everything, all the Monday, the tax returns, and so on.
I don’t post them up because I don’t have time.
I don’t think they’re very, you know, Instagrammable or photographic.
But the main reason is because it has nothing to do with my business.
I only keep that narrative pretty strong.
I only talk about work because for me, other stuff dilutes what I’m trying to do.
It distracts from it.
Because what do I know about how people follow me?
Will they follow me because I share tiramisu recipes?
Because I love a tiramisu and I’m Italian and you may well see it on my feed if I have the time and inclination.
Are they going to start following me for that, the way that I say, well, this is Italian food, but done quickly?
Or are they focusing on the fact that I help people with their PR?
And I don’t want to dilute that.
Some people have to dilute in a way.
Let’s think about someone like The Body Coach, Joe Wicks, Trinny Woodall.
Quite a lot of that extra stuff that they show does sell what they are selling.
But look at that.
You know, Trinny has always been on her Instagram and she has reviewed other people’s products for years to the point where I would tune in on a Saturday morning, maybe it was in lockdown, and listen to what she had to say about various things.
But what did she do some years later?
Kudos to her, created her own skincare brand.
And in that she has shown us that she knows everything about skincare and that’s why you should buy hers.
Same with The Body Coach.
He’s talking about health, family health, getting children involved and exercise and all being active.
And, you know, good for him.
He shows his family.
It’s not something I would do, but that’s his PR choice as a business.
That’s absolutely fine.
And his personal brand is all about, look at me, I travel, I sometimes eat rubbish food, but I eat well with my family and I teach children.
So is that personal branding or is that very clever PR?
That’s my question.
And what do you need to do in your business or what you’re building?
Let’s say you are a founder in training.
What do you need to do to tell people, you know?
Who do you need to attract to understand your language?
I always think of languages because I speak four and I know that metaphorically languages can open up conversations with people.
My question to you is, to anyone listening to this, is your follower numbers might be huge and you’re going for yet more likes and yet more follows.
But is popularity the same as success?
Are you converting and are you speaking the language of the customer you started the business for?
Everything you said is so true.
And I feel like it’s, yeah, it’s exactly that.

I think, I think about this a lot.
And obviously we talk about this and I think I show more of my lifestyle because I guess my whole brand is to talk about what it’s really like running a business.
So therefore, I feel like some of what I do on my day-to-day is relevant because I’m trying to show the real, no-bullshit version of running a business.
But at the same time, I don’t want to show everything because I want it to also be personal.
And I also like just being present and not being with my phone.
So I’m having, I’m in this bit of a torn thing where I don’t want to have to be on my phone all the time.
But I guess I would love to, I would love to finish with a set of like the keys to success, that’s always what everyone talks about, right?
It’s like if I just had a checklist of things to do to get great PR and be famous.
That’s what I guess what everyone’s looking for.
That’s the, I don’t know what the viral hook version of that is, but I’d love to know.
So your Felicity, so mine is called Jemima.
I named her.
OK.
Only because I don’t know a single Jemima.
Delighted you’ve named her.
Other than Puddle Duck.
That’s right.
I don’t know if you remember Jemima Puddle-Duck.
Yeah, of course I do.
Of course I do.
I think the majority of people would not know who Jemima Puddle-Duck is, but I don’t know a single Jemima in the world.
And that’s why I called her that because I don’t want to be partially influenced by the name of someone I already know, if you see what I mean.
So Jemima is mine and your Felicity, like if you are talking to them and they are like, right.
I’m an entrepreneur.
I’m not going to say a small business owner, but likely to be.
Independent business owner is what I say.
OK, nice.
I’m an entrepreneur and I’m looking to grow my business and I’m doing all the things.
I’m actively doing stuff.
I’m very much running my business because I don’t quite have the money yet to build a giant team.
So I’m wearing lots of hats still.
I, you know, I’ve got quite a bit of experience, but I still need a lot more.
I’m making some content.
I have a decent following on Instagram and LinkedIn.
I’m kind of doing a bit of both and I’m out meeting cool people.
I’m trying to get investment, but I want to build my brand.
I want more customers, I want more authority.
I think my brand’s great.
I should be out there more.
I see all my competitors doing this and they seem to be getting awards, they seem to be on podcasts, they seem to be with celebrity influencers, and my brand’s better and I’m doing so well.
What am I doing wrong and what can I do to boost my PR?
Because everyone else around me seems to be smashing it.
As you said, that’s kind of the general narrative of the entrepreneur that I speak to in 2025.
How do you help poor Jemima?
I’ve heard that at the beginning of quite a few one-to-ones, I can tell you.
That was actually quite scripted and well done.
That’s exactly how it goes usually.
And they have, they don’t usually use smash.
Before I run workshops and I always ask, I always ask people to sort of give themselves a score out of 10 when it comes to comms.
And I can tell you I always know before anyone’s started who’s going to say 3 and who’s going to give themselves a 7.
Only men, I have to say, have said 10 or nearly 10, which is always tongue in cheek, but I always know.
The 3 is the person who is not Jemima.
Is it Felicity?
No, because that’s the customer.
It’s somebody who has created something fantastic but just has no idea how to market it and is nervous because they’ve never done this sort of thing before.
Or it’s a second career, or they’re over a certain age and they think, oh, all of that’s for young people.
But I want to do it the old-school way.
By the way, there are lots of ways to do it still the old-school way.
So 3 is that.
3 is that.
7 is your lady.
7 is it’s all going really well.
I’m doing everything.
I just want to get bigger and I’m now up for bigger clients with bigger deals.
That’s cool.
I’d probably give that person a 5.
I wouldn’t say that to her because actually what is really happening is that she’s a 7 in terms of certainly intent and spreading thin, or at least let’s not say spreading.
Energy and motivation, that’s a 7.
But the results are a 5 because if she’s coming to me or you or somebody in that conversation, what she’s actually saying is I need a bit of help.
This, her problem also, and we have to admit this, it veers into business consultancy too.
Does this woman, for example, need, or her business, does she need a funnel?
Does she need to be taking less time working in the business, sorry, and work from outside it?
Is she someone who needs to stop renting her own time within the business and stepping away from it slightly?
She could also be someone who, and this really came up when you were talking, does she need to delegate?
So in the 3 category, those people who have fantastic microphones or glasses but don’t know what to do with it because they just…
I would always, instead of telling them to go on courses where they become confident speaking to camera, because by the way, you know, you can easily not buy yourself biscuits forever in your house because you know that you shouldn’t have them.
But on a really difficult day when it’s raining and you’ve lost your wallet, oh no, not your wallet, something else, you’re going to go and buy yourself a box of biscuits because that love for the biscuits is never going to go away, even if you’re really good about it.
So if you don’t really like speaking on camera, guess what?
You can become really good at it, but you’re never going to really want to do it.
So, just to bring it back, what do these people need to do?
It is, sorry, I would just end that to say that those people ought to really delegate that task of social media to somebody else.
Don’t let that be the hurdle you die on and your business stops on.
Please ask.
There are plenty of people who will simply do the content and you will probably find much, much more and help you.
And do not stop at that hurdle.
That would be a mistake.
But for the other person who’s doing everything, yes.
Is there a funnel?
Is there a delegation so that they could actually work out?
I would say, you know, I do straddle LinkedIn and Instagram.
I find one works better for me than the other and I feel that I have to speak with two different languages or speak via two different languages and two different hats.
That is actually a little bit exhausting in a way because I then look at myself.
This is what I would do with Jemima and think, which one converts?
Do they convert?
Does this convert?
My biggest converter is always word-of-mouth referrals every single time.
So that’s me.
So I would ask Jemima, let’s have a look at how this is landing.
To use a 2025 phrase, you created this.
This is your story.
This is the reason behind this is what you’re trying to change.
Let’s say she’s a disruptor in a particular industry like you are, in a good way.
Disruptor seems like a bad word, but you’re changing, you’re redefining.
This is really interesting.
People love that.
That’s why we like to buy non-fiction books, to understand a bit more about astrology or visualization or anything.
I would sort of ask her, you know, what is it that you’re…
Who is it that you’re trying to buy and win over and convince and persuade?
Who is your ultimate customer?
If she could walk in through the door, or he, who is it?
Where does that person hang out?
Are you speaking their language?
These are really basic points, but they are so important.
Are you distracting your message with things which you feel give it colour but don’t really add, doesn’t really add anything, don’t really add anything to what you’re trying to do?
Are you spreading yourself too thin and talking to therefore markets that will never buy, are not interested?
Is there a rival or a contemporary that you should be looking at to irritate you enough to understand that there’s something there that you’re not doing that you should be?
Have you looked at your market?
Have you looked at your industry?
A lot of people say to me, Priscilla, you know, I really want to get into this particular piece of, no, I really want to get into this publication.
I think that’s fantastic.
Who writes for that publication?
Who you want to feature you?
I don’t know.
Well, hang on.
You need to know because when you write to that journalist or meet them for a coffee, you need to know everything about them.
You need to know who they write about.
Why, what usually gets them going?
What’s the sort of thing that they like?
What kind of hook are you going to give them?
What have they recently featured which is not going to be exactly the same as you?
You know what, it’s not going to work, that pitch, if it’s something they only touched on two weeks ago.
Do you know what is your goal?
This is back to the Kissinger quote.
If you know where you’re going, it will be easier.
If you know who you’re pitching to, whether it’s an investor or the person in your networking community or the journalist, it’s going to be an easier conversation.
And it’s the same online.
If you know who you’re talking to, the conversions come faster.
You don’t have to do everything just because everything is available.
I’m not on TikTok.
I don’t think it would work.
I think I could probably, you know, gain some kind of a following, making points that would make sense to a certain generation.
But I don’t think they’d work with me.
I don’t think they need me at this point in their life.
So that would take up marketing time.
Even if I delegated it, it would cost me money, but I could have a go.
But what would happen if I have a go?
I am taking time away from working towards the people who I think it really would work with.
So that’s an allocation of time and energy.
What’s that phrase, where your attention goes, your energy goes?
And I’ve, I’ve been, I’ve been speaking so much about energy recently.
I just did, I’ve just did a book review on Energize, which is there by Simon Alexander.
I just did that on my YouTube channel and just been talking a lot about it because I’ve been feeling it recently and I’ve been trying to do and concentrate on things that actually don’t drain your energy because it takes away from everything else.
And I think that for me, like I said, most people’s business comes from word of mouth, I believe.
Like, I don’t, I mean, depends if you’re a product business.
And I think it’s, yeah, like I think a lot of the service-based businesses I know, they come from referrals, word of mouth.
But yet people are still concentrating on online content.
And because they think that if someone sees it, refers it, and yes, it does work, but I guess you have to work out the time ROI and energy ROI on that content.
I guess then the last thing I want to ask you is just because I feel like I get this question a lot.

And because you are a journalist and like, you know, you’ve been talking about PR and obviously it’s because that’s what people need your help for.
But actually you’re a journalist.
And like, again, people still talk about getting into press.
And the question is, how do you get into press?
And is it worth it?
Because that’s what everyone asks.
They pay a lot of money for these people to promise them press coverage.
What’s more thoughts on this for small business, for Dumimer for example?
Look, I’ve had it also from both angles.
So I’ve had people who say they’ve come to me for help.
I got quite good pieces of press.
These are they, but they didn’t convert.
Nothing happened.
And I say, OK.
And they say, so I’m not really going to go for the press again.
And I say, well, hang on a minute.
But what else did it do?
Let’s drill down.
And what that piece of press does for a Jemima there or someone else is give you a calling card.
It’s gravitas.
If The Telegraph says that you’re fantastic, or sorry, as a customer, if The Telegraph says Jemima’s fantastic, then she’s got to be.
It’s got to be right.
If they’ve backed her, if a name like that has backed her, it’s got to be good.
It’s like the restaurant.
You hear it 10 times.
You think I should go?
It’s a really fantastic form of gravitas.
Journalism is changing all the time, as everything is with AI.
You know, one doubts whether any content they see has actually been generated from one’s fingers and thoughts or someone else.
Irrelevant.
And we don’t need to go into that now.
But it does doubt the written word a little bit.
But that doesn’t mean journalism is over.
It’s changing and evolving.
It’s certainly the old-school journalism hasn’t quite gone.
It’s certainly a lesser form and it’s more diminished now, but it’s there and it will work.
The question is how do you get press?
Well, do you need it?
Is it the puzzle piece that you need right now?
It might be.
Everyone apparently needs it.
No, no.
Well, apparently you or you might need it in four years once you have delivered the campaign that you are trying to enact.
Or did you need it yesterday and therefore let’s get some quick runs on the board.
But do you need it?
Not everybody needs it.
Not everybody needs it.
A lot of people who come to workshops thinking that they do and the workshop is shortcuts to PR.
They think they’re going to get a journalism masterclass.
And by the way, there is a lot of that.
But we do spend a lot of time brainstorming the product or the business or the principal.
We do a lot of that because you end up realizing that A, you might not need to go to the press right now.
B, you should have gone yesterday, so let’s get some quick runs on the board.
C, the reason why most journalists have ignored you thus far is that you’ve been shooting from the wrong hip.
The brainstorm that we put together just now makes you a much more sort of beautiful product, as it were, with things to say that you haven’t been saying.
Four, have you been underselling yourself?
And five, therefore, if you’ve been underselling yourself, you’ve probably been going to the wrong people.
And so, but number six is do you need it?
Is what you do going to be far greater, far better, going to have much more impact on social media?
You could be, I don’t mean social media influencers necessarily or beauty influencers or fashion, that also can work for you depending on what you do.
But actually sometimes if you’re being, you know, backed up by people or you have a digital product or you are a very powerful force but quite small, how are you going to get that into the press?
You could wait two years for the particular piece of press that you want to sort of even interview you and then come out.
That is a long game you don’t want to be playing.
So, but then there are people who can get much quicker runs on the board.
And that’s why if somebody says I need to get press, I think, yeah, that’s going to work.
That’s going to work.
And that’s going to convert.
If somebody is, you know, talking about something that is going to launch in five years, they will still come to me and say I need to get in the press.
I think no, no, no, you can’t.
Because as a journalist, I know no one’s going to be interested in that right now.
Or I will look at the way someone has described this glass or Jennifer, not Jennifer.
What’s her name?
I forgot, Jemima.
Oh, my gosh.
Jemima.
She’s obviously not very impactful because I’ve forgotten her.
But I want to know what Jemima, you know, has been saying about her business thus far.
And do you know what?
A lot of people come to me to help, to get them to help with the journalist.
They’re absolutely fine.
How to pitch.
But when you learn how to pitch what you sell and what you love in your principal, you actually learn a hell of a lot more, which is what should I put in my content then?
And also what do I say in that room full of opportunity?
It’s the same thing.
If you ever want to go for an elevator pitch to get money, investors, it’s exactly the same thing.
So that’s another thing when people say go to speech, Priscilla, she will help you raise your profile and they go, oh, I’ve been burned by the press, definitely burned by PR agencies.
I’m not going anywhere near that.
Hopefully that person who referred in the first place, I hope and usually does say no, no, no, no.
This PR, totally non-cookie-cutter fashion.
This is everything you haven’t thought about yet.
And the other stuff will come once you brainstorm properly.
Well, thank you.
That was amazing.
And thank you so much for your time today.
It’s been so valuable and I feel like Jemima and all the other independent business owners have benefited so much from this today.
So thank you so much.
Thank you for having me, it’s lovely to be here.